State Fair

We made our annual trip to the State Fair on August 31st. The highlights for Leif were running around in the streets (he especially seemed to like the crosswalk outside the Eco Experience building, where he kept running back and forth on the zebra stripes); sampling my fish taco and the non-chocolatey parts of a few Sweet Martha's cookies; checking the doors on all the parked trucks he could find; and grooving to polka music with a mob of senior citizens at one of the live entertainment stages. He also was pretty excited about the nifty electric wheelchairs some of the seniors were driving.

We tried out a "safety harness" (backpack with a leash) briefly while we were in the Swine Barn. Not surprisingly, being tethered was NOT a big hit with Leif; it lasted maybe 10 minutes, if that. Luckily, it was not a very busy morning at the Fair, so he did not have too many opportunities to try running off into a dense crowd of people!





Leif was all tuckered out after a busy morning at the Fair. He is generally not big on napping in his stroller these days, but as soon as I gave him his "emergency" pacifier that I still carry buried deep in his diaper bag, he was OUT! While Leif snoozed for the next hour, Aaron and I enjoyed a leisurely walk back to our car (by way of the Art Building).

Oven mitts

Leif continues to enjoy taking things out of the kitchen drawers and throwing them on the floor -- and on rare occasions, even putting a few of them back. (All right, admittedly, what he would generally *prefer* to do when playing in the kitchen is to climb up on the low bar on the front of the oven and try to turn all the burner knobs, but when I manage to dissuade him from doing that, emptying drawers is a reasonable consolation activity.)

On this particular day, he found the oven mitts, and even managed to figure out how to put them on. Not rocket science, I know, but I'm not sure he's ever seen an adult put them on, since I don't generally turn the oven on when he is around. Maybe oven mitts are just one of those things that are intuitive for toddlers, like iPhones.

18 months old!

Leif's grandparents, Auntie Sarah, and Great-Aunt Mirja all came over for dinner in late August to celebrate Leify Leifster turning one and a half years old. I never thought I would be one for celebrating half birthdays, but given the scope of the differences between a 6-month-old and a 1-year-old, or a 1-year-old and an 18-month-old, all the growing and learning they do in such a short period of time seems worth celebrating!

And speaking of growing, we also took Leif to the doctor for his 18-month checkup recently, so we got to find out how many pounds and inches his summer growth spurt netted him. He continues to be a rather large, but not huge, boy for his age: 33.5 inches tall (80th percentile) and 27.6 pounds (69th percentile).

Below, Leif plays peek-a-boo with Auntie Sarah in the new Elmo tent she gave him as an 18-month birthday present (thanks, Auntie!).

Driving

After seeing how much Leif likes driving the bus at the Children's Museum, I decided to try letting him sit in my lap to play with the steering wheel and all the buttons in my car. Needless to say, it was a big hit, and now if I ever attempt to put Leif straight in his car seat without letting him sit in the front and "drive" the car first, I hear some serious complaining. Fortunately, it just takes a few minutes of changing radio stations and messing with the turn signals and the air conditioning to satisfy his urge to push buttons, and then I can *usually* get him into his car seat a relatively happy camper.

Pub

I originally got this plastic tub back in the pre-Leif era to hand-wash laundry (although I'm not sure it ever actually was used for that purpose...maybe once!). Once Leif's toys started taking over the living room, we repurposed the tub as an impromptu toy bin, which worked fairly well except for the fact that Leif really, really likes to climb into the tub, which meant he was frequently throwing or dumping all the toys out of it to create room for himself. (Sometimes he would simply climb in on top of all the toys, although that was considerably more awkward and less comfortable). So now the tub -- or the "pub," as it is known in Leif's vernacular -- generally sits empty, waiting for him to clamber in. When he's in the mood, he's also been known to pick up the tub and drag it around the living room and dining room, all the while exclaiming, "Pub! Pub! Pub!" I'm curious to see how long this dragging/pushing phase goes on -- maybe until he figures out how to climb up on chairs and get all the forbidden things off of counters and tabletops? Uh-oh...I so shouldn't have said that!

Piano toes

Leif has joined his cousin Vivian in her appreciation of the little electric keyboard over at Grandma and Grandpa B.'s house. Leif does not generally rock out on it quite to the extent that Vivian did last December, but he does enjoy experimenting with pressing some of the keys with both his fingers and his toes. And, not surprisingly, he loves turning the keyboard on and off (and on and off and on and off...).

Even bigger boy shoes

Leif checks out the laces on his new shoes


I remember thinking, back in January or February when Leif and I trekked down to Burnsville Center to get him his first pair of rubber-soled tennis shoes, that those were his first real "big boy shoes." Nonetheless, Aaron and I continue to be amazed with each shoe size he gains how ENORMOUS his feet always look to us in the new shoes. This summer Leif ate a ton and got noticeably taller, so we shouldn't have been surprised that his feet were growing equally fast; still, we were a bit dismayed to find that the sandals he had gotten just in June were already starting to seem tight by early August. (He loves those sandals and doesn't seem to mind the snugness, though, so he is still wearing them pretty frequently.) We had bought this pair of sneakers at the Albertville outlet mall in July, thinking that Leif would probably be ready to wear them sometime later on in the fall. They ended up getting some good use long before we expected them to!

Once the time comes to buy Leif snow boots -- something we did not have to do last year, since he was not really walking steadily until the spring thaw hit -- I'm thinking we ought to buy him boots that are *at least* two sizes too large, or they will not last him through the winter!